Science-fiction book recommendations?

Of late, my favorite SF-ish book is Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. It is truly and completely fucked up. Kind of a future post apocalyptic steampunk dystopia where everyone's status is determined by the intactness of their color vision.

They have Nanotech roads, but aren't allowed to make spoons, and the main character's registered hobby is designing queueing systems.

And we don't quite find out how the world go this way...but there are oblique references to The Something That Happened.

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Tales of Prix the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem) Russian space stories with a dry wit

POLISH!!!

I can recommend Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. I blazed through it in record time earlier this month when I was down with the sickness. He's a gun nut, and the technical jargon shows, but overall it's a very good read and funny to boot. Blowing away monsters is just icing on the cake.

Author's website

Turek wrote:

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Tales of Prix the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem) Russian space stories with a dry wit

POLISH!!!

Perhaps "Soviet" would have been more accurate.

Read all PKD novels. They're all worth reading, even the dodgy ones. Your best bet is to go to the bookstore and buy two books _Four Novels of the 1960s_ and Four Novels of the 1970s, part of the American Library. They're literally the top Dick books you should read. If you read only three of them though (that aren't DO ANDROIDS):

THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
MARTIAN TIME-SLIP
UBIK

Beyond that, every one is going to have something amazing in it. Dick is the greatest writer to ever work in science fiction. He makes all these tacky genre hacks look slack-jawed and lazy.

Also, Samuel R. Delany's NOVA is a must read, DHALGREN if you're really daring yourself. CONCETRATION CAMP by Thomas M. Disch. LORD OF LIGHT by Zelazny. Ballard's SF work is all worth reading. Blish's A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN. Sturgeon's MORE THAN HUMAN. Haldeman's FOREVER WAR.

There's always Ellison. He's ridiculously hit or miss. Sometimes you get something untouchably awesome ("I Have No Mouth..."), sometimes you get pretentious garbage.

And to Turek's delight, I'd also second the Lem recommendation, along with of course SOLARIS.

I love science fiction, but I don't like hack genre writing.

DHALGREN? Really? That's one I would only recommend to someone who is damn sure that they love Science Fiction. Like, 1,000 pages worth of sure.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote:

Be vary wary about going beyond the original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). I bought the first 6 he wrote from a second hand book store and the original series of 3 would be in my top 3 novels of all time. The problem is that Asimov wrote this great series of short stories and then years later revisited them and headed into bizarre territory and Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth are an attempt to tie the series to his other work, and after being rather disappointed with them didn't read Prelude to Foundation (and after a friend told me a couple of plot points in that am glad I didn't). I sold those 3 back to the same book store, and have reread the original series a couple of times since with no inclination at all to reread the others.

Believe me, I have very little/no intention on going past the original trilogy. I bought Prelude to Foundation, read about half of it, and gave up and went on to Foundation. Asimov in his later years went down hill.

On the PKD subject, Do Anroids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly are two of my favorites, but I love pretty much everything I've read by him.

I picked this book up awhile ago, and I'd pretty much call it an essential for any sci-fi collection. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume 1 . Some pretty core, seminal stuff here from most of the classic greats of the genre.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION and THE DEMOLISHED MAN.

Hell yes, Barnes. Hell yes.

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Turek wrote:

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Tales of Prix the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem) Russian space stories with a dry wit

POLISH!!!

Perhaps "Soviet" would have been more accurate.

What the fuck are you talking about?! The guy was Polish. And, Poland was a satellite of the USSR - not part of it.

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

maka wrote:

BTW, another book from Asimov (kind of like a very, very early prequel to it all) was The End of Eternity.

Yes, that one was a pleasant surprise. Also: Caves of Steel which is the first in what later became the "Robot Series"

I enjoyed reading all those xx years ago in my late teens. The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun of the Robots series and The End of Eternity, all good stories. And I'm in Maka's boat in that I enjoyed the later Foundation books and their joining up with the Robots.

For short reads I recommend Microcosmic God and The Cold Equations. I believe both are available online, each about 30 minutes.

S.

scissors wrote:

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Turek wrote:

Spanish Inquisition wrote:

Tales of Prix the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem) Russian space stories with a dry wit

POLISH!!!

Perhaps "Soviet" would have been more accurate.

What the fuck are you talking about?! The guy was Polish. And, Poland was a satellite of the USSR - not part of it.[/quote

"In September 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and added Galician lands inhabited by Ukrainians to the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1945, these lands were permanently annexed, and the Transcarpathia region was added as well, by treaty with the post-war administration of Czechoslovakia."

From Wikipedia. More here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Ukraine

You don't know your history if you think Poland as a whole was ever 'part' of the Soviet Union, invaded during WW II or not: it was a Warswaw Pact country. Look up the list of Soviet countries while you are at Wikipedia. Also, even if POland had been forcibly made part of that union, Stanislav Lem wouldn't have been any less Polish by nationality, the way Latvians, Estonians, and Lithunians weren't 'Russians'.

As for Czechoslovakia, the part of Czechoslovakia that was annexed was only the last bit that is the sub-carpathian Ukraine.

Maybe you should bloody look up the author's nationality at wikipedia whle you're there. Your 'accurate' answer is bloody insulting. How would you like being told Hemingway was a Canadian author because he was from 'North America'? Or because he filed stories for the Toronto Star? Get your hesd out of your presumptuous ass.

I'm looking at my map here and Poland is clearly part of the Ukraine.

. . . and can be attacked from Scandinavia, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Afghanistan, and Ural.

S.

scissors wrote:

Get your hesd out of your presumptuous ass.

Hey, YOU presumed to correct me. I simply explained myself. As for Lem, given the times he lived in he would probably have defined himself as "Jewish". So who's presumptuous? I already know who's the ass.